When Baradhwaj R Encounters a Thorny Challenge, He Turns to Data for a Solution.

For Demandbase Champion Baradhwaj R (aka Brad), Director of Marketing at MoEngage, embracing a data-driven approach to drive growth is essential. We sat with Baradhwaj to learn how he scales his ABM programs, determines which content resonates best, and keeps a spring in his step at work by harboring his passion for marketing.

How did your team scale their ABM efforts?

MoEngage has been committed to an account-based approach since I came on board. While we were doing things at a smaller capacity, we needed a tool to help us scale our ABM efforts without completely redesigning the tech stack. We also didn’t want to change our business processes or reinvent the wheel. Demandbase is an excellent fit as it aligns with our strategy and the tech stack perfectly. It’s a precise tool to help broadly expand our ABM efforts. Demandbase delivers a comprehensive picture of each account to help us understand what’s happening holistically and illuminate account coverage. We can identify activities helping us move the accounts down the funnel and map out the next steps.

How does Demandbase help you do your job?

With Demandbase, we get a holistic picture of our overall target list. As a team, it enables us to prioritize the target accounts we plan to pursue in a given timeframe. We can check progress and ask: “What kind of engagement are we seeing in this account? What stage is each account at in its journey? How successful have we been so far?” Getting a bird’s eye view of the account is really important.

Demandbase helps automate and orchestrate our efforts. If the accounts cross a prespecified threshold (100-150 engagement minutes), the platform sends an alert via Slack to notify account owners or add them to a specific nurture campaign in Hubspot. Automating these actions saves a ton of time for our marketing ops, sales ops, and market research team members.

We use Demandbase to generate awareness and drive a more extensive reach through advertising. The orchestration feature helps push our target audience from Demandbase to Facebook and LinkedIn.

Additionally, we are able to measure the impact of campaign performance. Data-driven marketers are always keen on knowing what works and what doesn’t — and how a specific campaign helps drive engagement or influence in closing or even accelerating a deal. But how do you actively measure this? We use Salesforce to record all our campaigns. So when we launch a new asset or campaign into the market, we create a corresponding campaign in Salesforce, define specific success metrics, and tie it to Demandbase. The program impact capability in Demandbase helps us compare, understand, and measure the campaign performance of the target account list. You can also draw a direct correlation between campaigns vs. pipeline (both created and influenced pipeline). We can further filter/compare data such as size or industry etc., and use such insights to double down and focus on things that will help progress the account down the funnel.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I enjoy playing The Settlers of Catan, which is a board game that I have been playing for ages. It became quite popular during the COVID timeframe. It can also be played online with friends and strangers. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I love Body Combat. It’s a mixed martial art (MMA) inspired workout that includes various martial art disciplines like kickboxing, Kung fu, Muay Thai, taekwondo, capoeira, and more. This form of training is a fantastic way to blow off steam and stay fit. I imagine all the negative things from the day and punch through them!

What is your superpower?

Being a problem solver and leveraging data is my secret weapon! Come to me with a problem, and I’ll spend time pondering how we can go about solving it. I like to help people get unstuck. I even heard some of my friends and colleagues say, “Brad is here, and you have nothing to fear.”

What would you tell an ABM Newcomer?

• Good data gives you an edge over the competition.
• Ensure you have high-quality data in your CRM. That will allow Demandbase and other tools to work at their highest capacity.
• Experiment. Something that works for one account or segment may not work for everything. Also, experiments always help you stay a step ahead.

About MoEngage

MoEngage is an insights-led customer engagement platform trusted by more than 1200 customer-obsessed consumer brands across the globe, such as Ally Financial, McAfee, Samsung, Domino’s, Nestle, Deutsche Telekom, Kredivo, Gojek, and more. MoEngage empowers marketers and product owners with insights into customer behavior and the ability to act on those insights to engage customers across the web, mobile, email, social, and messaging channels. Consumer brands across 35 countries use MoEngage to power digital experiences for over 1 billion monthly customers. MoEngage is backed by Goldman Sachs, B Capital, Steadview Capital, Multiples Private Equity, Eight Roads, F-Prime Capital, Matrix Partners, Ventureast, and Helion Ventures.